


Woof!

by Inkheart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, German Shepard, Mass Effect Kink Meme, but not a dog, for now at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkheart/pseuds/Inkheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Kink Meme Promt: Shepard from a different Country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was scrolling through the Prompts and stumbled on this one.

Johanna Shepard, known to the galaxy at large as Commander Shepard and to her mother as Jojo, since having two Hannahs in one family tended to be akward (her father had written her name down when her mother was on pain-meds and thus not in a state to really protest), was among the engineers and other assorted mechanical support staff more often referred to as She-Who-Fixes-Machinery-Through-Her-Magic-Grumbling.

Which was through the power of convenient time flow for narrating exactly what she was doing at the moment.

Someone, who was going to wonder exactly what they had done in a previous life to deserve such a shitty day after she finished cursing them, had thought it a good idea to implement a standardised fuel-storage system in every ship built by the Alliance. Seeing as the Normandy was build for a large part on turian design, it is rather obvious to a person using their brain that one might better think about implementing such measures before they cause coolant spills that may in turn cause a rather disgruntled Commander Shepard to have to crawl through the innards of her ship searching for the origin of the goo in her morning dose of 1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dione and cursing the person responsible to be afflicted with bureaucracy, sudden water downpour and traffic congestion.

When the Commander found the source of the problem, well the the source of the intrusion on her hot beverage at least, the person responsible was filling out forms in triplicate to obtain a form that might grant them the opportunity to reach the assistant of the civil servant in charge of office supplies while he was napping and ask her to place his petition for clean drinking water within the agency they were working for on the top of the third stack, where he might see it when he woke up, she uttered her favourite depreciation when confronted with the unalterable fact, that people, especially people who plan things, in general are rather stupid.

"Herr, schmeiß Hirn ra!"

Which, for anyone unacquainted with the Swabian dialect of the German language is a simple plea to God (or an alternative higher power, such as Logic, Order and whichever subcommitee in Heaven is responsible for Beer-brewing) to make it rain brains. In the perhaps somewhat desperate hope, that if someone is hit with something often enough, it might stick. Urgency can be added to the prayer by remarking that an increasing number of upper management positions are coming to be occupied by boars.

After remarking on the fact that this kind of thing would not have happened at home and that the entire Corps of Engineers ought to be made to get their education in Stuttgart or at least in Germany, she set about sealing the breach in the pipes according to proper procedure, already composing a report about the situation to the Departement of Keeping Things Going So That We Don´t All Die, more casually known as Supplies and Maintenance, while picking out the correct crewman to clean up the spill. Such is an art few people who are not in command can appreciate. You cannot pick on the same person to often, as such would be interpreted as favouritism. At the same time you cannot get insubordinate little assholes get away with their behaviour. Someone who has mastered the art of picking on people properly may get away with constantly assigning one person latrine duties without fearing a mutiny. Everyone else has to be content with being known as a savage vengeful bitch and keeping their crew living in fear of wronging them.

Shepard was currently favouring someone from engineering, as it was the same department that had disturbed her morning ritual of bad-tempered silence and ingestion of a viscous fluid of dark colour that pretended to be coffee by not fixing the hole before a drop of the offending liquid landed on the tip of her nose from which it performed a suicidal dive into concentrated acid.


	2. How Jojo handles the Dog thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> German Shepard, that requires at least a comment

Commander Shepard is a name that nowadays inspires passionate reactions in nearly all civilized corners of the galaxy. Depending on the being responding to the query a curious person may find themselves regaled with heroic tales of daring-do, an angry diatribe or an unintelligible grunt. Also, depending on the persons definition of civilized and the civilization in question, there might me a reply that is rather common across all species, especially the ones in the habit of naming their offspring forgettable names.

In the case of the Oufalföd, a rather literally spineless species with cylindrical long tube-like bodies and no limbs living under the shelter of a large aggregation of Silicondioxide the reply would have involved an array of splashes of dust and minerals recently processed by the same species. After ingesting the information a fellow being of similar genetic material would have through a truly astonishing amount of naturally developed mathematics been able to determine that their fellow worm had no knowledge of this Commander Shepard.

For all of Commander Shepards fame, Shepard and it´s variations Shepherd and Sheepshead are rather common names among humans. Which has a tendency to confuse not-humans it is after all rather illogical for people of the same last name to not be genetically related. Descriptions of sheep tend to disturb other species as well, for varying reasons ranging from wearing animal pelts as clothing to keeping an animal that cannot defend itself for another reason than eating it.

Funnily enough, Commander Shepards name has nothing to do with the mentioned quadrupedal, ruminant mammal or a card game determined to frustrate learners, though several gentlebeings would have rather appreciated a warning that the good Commander plays not only Skat (pronounced Skaht, get your head out of the gutter) and Fizzbin but also Poker uncommonly well.

Instead it started out as a compound word referring to the daughter of a shipbuilder who had married a stonemason named Hart. General laziness first shortened her name from That-Shipbuilders-Daughter-Who-Married-That-Hart-Fellow-And-Not-A-Nice-Sailor-As-She-Ought-Have to Shipbuilders-Hart, which also allowed for some really bad puns involving the homophone heart. As humans do love their lame puns she was forever stuck with that name and later generations shortened the mouthful to Shiphart.

Fates general love of irony allowed vowel drift to finish what lower forms of humour had started and from then on any Shephard of that family who ever let slip that they were German immediately had their nicknames fixed for all eternity.

There are several methods to counter this, passed on from generation to generation of disgruntled, long-suffering, highly competent, cool under pressure, strong-willed and highly muscled German Shepards.

The first involves absolute silence about their origins. As they are usually the people who have to fix things when they go wrong and doing so without grumbling under your breath is difficult, it is however not considered a long-term solution.

The second involves coming up with even more outrageous nicknames, but can be difficult, especially as it is difficult to go much lower, since German Shepard is already in the negative space of punland.

The third and most often utilized involves being silent and menacing about it, so the perpetrator will refrain from using their not very original creation on fear of death or latrine duty.

The fourth involves physical violence and is most often utilized when the Shepard in question is to young to pull of the proper sense of menace.

It goes beyond question of course, that on Commander Shepards ship the words German and Shepard have never been uttered in that combination. Not even a certain Mr. Moreau has ever attempted it.  
There may or may not be legends among the entire fleet of what happened to people stupid enough to try.

\--------  
For some reason a chill swept down Garrus spine when he mentioned to Shephard that he was reading up on domesticated animals popular with humans. Did she not like pets?  
\--------

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it, German Shepard. Or at least a few paragraphs of her.  
> Her name is Johanna, because that is the German version of the name Jeanne, which sounds pretty similar to Jane. Also because Johanna and Hannah Shepard are a hilariously bad combination and probably the reason Shepards father isn´t around anymore.


End file.
